Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest

Edit Locked

"Earth. After the War. Three years have passed since I saw your face. I wonder if I come to you, at night, in dreams; in the day, as memories. "Do I haunt your hours, the way you haunted mine? And I wonder if you see me, when you look at her? "If we have souls, they are made of the love we share; undimmed by time, unbound by death. "For three years I searched for the house he built. I knew it had to be out there. Because I know him. I am him. I am Jack Harper, and I'm home. "

Advertisement:

So the protagonist is forced to part with a love interest for fantastic (supernatural/fantasy/science fiction) reasons.
But it's okay! Because at the end of the story they meet a doppelgänger who happens to look exactly like the person they lost.

Usually, the new love interest has been relationship-free for some time, or just got out of a long term relationship.

Examples:

This is subverted with Kurono and Kishimoto. When Kishimoto died during a mission, Kurono thought to try and pursue her original that was still living a normal life. However, she ends up thinking Kurono is a nutty stalker and runs away from him.

However, this trope is followed in relation to Kato and Kishimoto. It's implied that Kato has finally decided to get together with Kishimoto's original, and she seems to have taken a liking to him.

And the manga does this to a T with Reika's very own Kurono, who she resurrects with this trope in mind.

In Threads Of Time, this is what happens to Moon-Bin at the end. Although he isn't able to end up with Atan Hadas from the past, when he goes back into present time, it's implied that he ends up with a girl (that always liked him) who is identical to Atan Hadas.

Inuyashaplays with this trope in the situation between Inuyasha, Kikyo, and Kagome. After Kikyo's death, plenty of characters who knew Kikyo are struck by the similarity between Kikyo and Kagome (justified by the fact that Kagome is Kikyo's reincarnation), resulting in Kagome angsting over being compared to Kikyo. Inuyasha himself was initially repulsed by Kagome because her scent was so similar to Kikyo, something he got over when he realised their scents weren't the same. He didn't actually notice the physical resemblence between the two until he caught Kagome sleeping one time and had the chance to really study her face to see what everyone else was going on about; for him it didn't really factor in to how he handled Kagome. As a result, the trope is played with because while the resemblence is there, it's not the driving force behind their relationship or the reason Inuyasha became attracted to Kagome. The differences between Kagome and Kikyo are, in fact, so stark, that Kikyo and Kagome have trouble understanding each other and Inuyasha never has any trouble keeping the two women straight in his head because their personalities and motivations are very different.

Toyed with in MÄR with Koyuki being Ginta's love interest from the real world, and he ends up having fallen for Snow, her exact counterpart in the fantasy world. In the end, he decides to return to the real world and, in the anime, starts dating Koyuki, who Snow's spirit has joined with.

Played with in the second half of Fushigi Yuugi. After Miaka encounters a man who looks identical to Tamahome, named Taka, in her own world, it's said that he's Tamahome's reincarnation. After Taka suffers from some Cloning Blues, Suzaku admits that Taka Sukunami is not Tamahome's reincarnation, but a regular man who was meant to unite with Tamahome's memories.

Also, Houki marries Hotohori, who looks just like her former boyfriend Tendou who is Hotohori's half-brother, and the original crown prince of Konan. And even though Hotohori and Nuriko were never an Official Couple, the fact that Houki resembles Nuriko raised more than a few eyebrows in the fandom.

Ultimately averted in Project ARMS. Almost immediately after the apparent death of Katsumi, a girl named Kei is introduced. She looks exactly like Katsumi (to the point where it's later revealed that she was Katsumi's clone and Ryo is obvious struck by this resemblance. But then Ryo and Kei only ever are friends, while Hayato becomes her love interest. Katsumi, meanwhile, turns out to be alive, and Ryo spends the series trying to rescue her.

In Mahou Sensei Negima! Eva from the future states that one of her goals is to find an "extra Nagi", after she gets a dimension jumping machine from Chao.

In the ending of Future Diary, Yuno dies for Yukiteru's sake, but due to the meddling of various other characters, Yuki eventually gets together with another version of Yuno from an alternate timeline, who was given her memories by the original Yuno's familiar. As a bonus, since Yuki's time-traveling shenanigans resulted in her counterpart having a happier childhood, she's not a Yandere. Similarly, Minene finds herself trapped in the past but ends up marrying the two-years-younger version of Nishijima, who had died in Minene's timeline trying to help Minene win the survival game. There are also elements of Love Transcends Spacetime, since the younger Nishijima inexplicably seemed to recognize Minene, and although the alternate Yuno is leading a happy life, she can't help but feel like she's missing something very important.

In Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor, Glenn's previous crush/possible lover Sara was killed prior to the beginning of the series. In the present, he has romantic subtext with both Sistine (who looks like a younger Sara) and Rumia (who has a similar personality to Sara).

Comic Books

In the X-Men comics, after Jean Grey "died" in The Dark Phoenix Saga, her boyfriend, Scott Summers, met and married Madelyne Pryor, a girl who looked just like her. Originally, Maddie was meant to just be a girl who happened to resemble Jean, but after Jean's return she was retconned as being a clone created by Mister Sinister, who wanted a child from Jean Grey and Scott Summers' genes and arranged for Scott to meet Maddie and eventually marry and have a child with her. Sure enough, said child grew up to be the time-traveling badass Cable.

In Countdown to Final Crisis The Atom Ray Palmer ended up in a parallel universe where his counterpart had just died. He tried to make a new life for himself there and got together with the counterpart of his insane ex-wife Jean Loring. Amazingly enough, things were actually going pretty well — but since this is Countdown, which was described on this wiki as DC's love letter to Kill 'Em All, it didn't last.

In RASL, the protagonist's girlfriend is killed and then he finds himself in a parallel universe where she's still alive — and so is his longer-dead wife. This being RASL, this only makes his troubles more complicated.

When Earth-1 was destroyed the original Black Canary's husband was killed. When she was transported to a new Earth she met their version of him and instantly began flirting with him.

In Injustice: Gods Among Us, Black Canary was in a relationship with Green Arrow, but he died in their home universe. At the end of the second year she gets brought Back from the Dead and meets an alternate universe Arrow, while Doctor Fate explains that this Arrow lost his own Canary five years ago. While Fate says knows the two have never met and that he cannot guarantee them happiness, he can give them each other. The scene ends with Arrow calling her "Pretty Bird", the original's pet name for her.

Volume 3 of Runaways was supposed to end with the team ending up in an alternate universe where Gert Yorkes and Old Lace never died, creating the possibility of her getting together with Chase, who had never really gotten over his Gert's death. Unfortunately, due to the series' abrupt cancellation in mid-arc, it actually ended with Chase encountering an alternate-universe version of Gert and then being hit by a van.

Spider-Man dealt with this in the original Clone Saga by Gerry Conway. Peter, pining after Gwen after her death, meets Gwen's clone and his old feelings for her resurface. However, the returned Gwen is the Gwen as Peter remembers her but not the true Gwen, whereas his real feelings are for Mary Jane, an actual flesh-and-blood woman. According to Conway, the whole point was to demonstrate how unhealthy and sick grief can be and how our longing for The Lost Lenore comes from rejecting reality.

In The Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye, a malfunction with the Lost Light's quantum engines causes the entire ship to duplicate itself the moment it leaves Cybertron. On the version the readers follow, Chromedome and Rewind's romance ends tragically when Rewind pulls a Heroic Sacrifice. On the "second", the entire crew save Rewind ends up massacred by the Decepticon Justice Division. When the two find each other, they end up resuming their relationship. However, the series is very careful to point out that neither one is a complete duplicate of the partner the other lost, and the way this affects their relationship is an important plot point after that.

Wonder Woman (1942): After Steve Trevor's (Pre-Crisis) death he was replaced as her love interest by "Steve Howard", who was actually Eros masquerading as a human by possessing Steve's body.

Wonder Woman (2006): As Perez had ensured Steve couldn't be Diana's love intrest Post-Crisis by marrying him off to Etta a new blonde, blue eyed, spy, American government agent love intrest was temporarily given to Di; Tom Tresser.

In the infamous My Immortal, when Draco is kidnapped by Voldemort, Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way mentions how Vampire looks exactly like Draco... before screwing him in front of the class. Which is even more ridiculous when you remember that "Vampire" is supposed to be Harry and he doesn't look like Draco.

Averted in How the Light Gets In. Some time after Laurel's death, Dean tried to "make it work" with her Earth-2 counterpart and she even tried to lie to make it easier, but it failed because the two versions were just too different. Dean even thinks he could try with every single alternate version of her, and it would fail every time because it wouldn't be his Laurel. Also deconstructed, in that it's made clear even trying was a decidedly unhealthy choice.

This is discussed in God Slaying Blade Works. Rin Tohsaka says that her teacher Zelretch has warned all his students of the dangers of meeting alternate universe versions of their loved ones. When Sakura Matou asks to study under Zelretch to learn the 2nd Magic and have the ability to travel to other universes, Rin warns her that even if she finds an alternate Shirou Emiya, it would just be a guy who shares his face, not the man she fell in love with. Sakura then corrects her; she's just figured out the man she fell in love with is trapped in another dimension, not dead, so she aims to retrieve him.

This is majorly used in the Cartoon Crossover The Sinners and Their Saints. One of the main characters, Manny Rivera was happily engagged to the holy woman Analia Montoya but later she is killed by a jealous ex of his. A hundreds years later he slowly starts to fall in love with Frida Suarez a nun who looks identical to Analia and is in fact her reincarnation,however the personalities between the two women couldn't be more different.

Popular with the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom after the introduction of Flash Sentry is to have Twilight attempt to go out with his pony counterpart. Stories range from this being a rousing success to as big a failure as Flash's attempts with Human!Twilight. Fanfiction wherein Sunset goes back to Equestria to find romance with one of the pony versions of people she knew are slightly rarer.

In An Interdimensional Meet, featuring an original take on the The Flash/Supergirl crossover, the alternate version of Nora Allen from Supergirl's Earth, who witnessed the deaths of her Henry and Barry when Thawne attacked them that night, accompanies Barry back to Earth-1, where she is 'reunited' with Henry Allen of Earth-1, who acknowledges that they have technically never met but asks her out on a date nevertheless. When the story flash-forwards to a year later, Barry returns to Supergirl's Earth and reveals that Henry and Nora are now married- Nora using the name 'Grace' and posing as a distant relative of her counterpart- and he even has a new baby sister.

Played with in the first movie. Twilight Sparkle is sent to the human world and Humanity Ensues. During her adventure, she and a human named Flash Sentry become attracted to each other. At the end, when she returns home, she runs into Flash's pony counterpart, making her blush.

Briefly played with in the third film, Friendship Games, before being deconstructed in the fourth (Legend of the Everfree). In the former, Flash Sentry meets the human Twilight Sparkle and believes her to be Princess Twilight, but she's too concerned with her research to even talk to him. He doesn't realize that she's a different Twilight until the end of the film. In the latter, he still tries to pursue a relationship with this knowledge, but is ultimately convinced by Sunset Shimmer, his ex-girlfriend, that he shouldn't because this Twilight is her own person that he doesn't have anything in common with and who is clearly interested in someone else.

Films  Live-Action

In Susie Q, Zach falls for Susie, a ghost who needs to settle her family's unresolved affairs before moving on to the afterlife. With the help of Zach, she succeeds and moves on to the afterlife and is reunited with grandfather and boyfriend. The next day at school, Zach runs into a new student named Maggie (played by the same actress). It's strongly implied that she's Susie's reincarnation, sans Susie's memories. The situation prompts Zack to give a baffled glance to the camera

Xanadu has the protagonist parting with a muse played by Olivia Newton John, only to meet an identical waitress at the end. Or the waitress actually is said muse, trying for a version of the relationship her family can at least pretend they don't know about. Some of her parents' remarks leave it a bit ambiguous.

A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court (1949). Bing Crosby's character meets and falls in love with Alisande La Carteloise ("Sandy") in King Arthur's time. When he returns to the present, he meets a woman who looks just like her.

Likewise, Black Knight has Martin Lawrence meeting a modern ringer for the love interest he left behind in the past. Nicky also has a scar on her neck at the exact same spot where Percival held a sword to Victoria's throat.

Some onscreen adaptions of The Nutcracker end like this, with toymaker's nephew looking exactly like the eponymous prince (Note, in the original story they are actually the same person.)

In The Forbidden Kingdom, the protagonist's love interest dies in her attempt to assassinate the villain, but in the ending, he meets an identical girl in the present.

Meet Joe Black seriously inverts this trope. At the very beginning of the movie, Death takes on the aspect of a man who gets hit by a truck just after the female lead falls madly in love with him. Death then proceeds to fall in love with her, and at the end of the movie when he must leave to get back to work, he resurrects the real Love Interest to take his place.

Mirrormask: Helena hooks up with Valentine's human counterpart at the end. Although Helena and Valentine himself didn't flirt, not counting her telling her mother that He Is Not My Boyfriend.

In the film The One, Jet Li fights his Evil Twin from an alternate dimension. The evil Yulaw kills Gabe Law's wife, frames him, and tries to kill him to become a god. After much chop-sockey, Gabe Law ends up in a version of Los Angeles where the original copy of him has long since been killed off and meets a version of his former wife exactly as he did in his world. This was the plan by Jason Statham's character, who knew that sending him back to his own universe would result in him being put away for his wife's murder.

Sort of used in Dark City — Emma Murdoch gets all her memories erased and she becomes Anna, and John Murdoch decides to start over with her. Justified, since their relationship beforehand was fake—Emma's memories of the marriage were no more real than Anna's past, and John had already lost his fake memories. So this replacement relationship is more real than the original one.

Given a dark twist in Vertigo. Scottie, despondent over the death of Madeleine, finds a woman named Judy who looks almost exactly like her. The two begin dating, but Scottie starts pressuring Judy to dress exactly like Madeleine. However, what he doesn't know is that Judy actually IS Madeleine, who faked her death but now is struck with a terrible case of Loves My Alter Ego.

Bicentennial Man involves Andrew, a Ridiculously Human Robot played by Robin Williams, watch the family that owns him grow. When the owner's young daughter has grown, she subtly reveals that she has feelings for Andrew. Having only begun his journey to understand what it means to be human, Andrew has no idea what she means and suggests that she marry her fiancé. She does so. Years later, he is freed by his owner and leaves to find others like him. In the process, he meets an inventor who changes Andrew's appearance to that of a human (his organs are still artificial). He comes back to his former owner's home and kisses the woman he assumes to be the daughter. She freaks out, and it's revealed that many years have passed, and the woman he kissed is her grown-up granddaughter (played by the same actress). And yes, they end up together.

Technically, so is Jack 49, as both are clones of Julia's dead husband.

In Captain America (1990), Steve's love interest from the 1940s waited 15 years after he disappeared to marry and have a daughter (played by the same actress). Steve and the daughter are a couple by the end of the film.

Calvin loses his fictional love interest in Ruby Sparks, but finds an identical real-life counterpart at the end, played by the same actress with shorter hair.

It seemed to be implied that it actually was still her, just a version of her that had been made independent from the story.

Quest for Love differs from the short story "Random Quest" by John Wyndham on which it is based as Ottilie Harshom dies of a previously undiagnosed congenital heart weakness. This obviously means that is no possibility of she and Colin Trafford being able to resume their relationship even if he managed to find a way to return to the Alternate Universe. As such, there is less of a sense that Colin is "settling" for Ottilie's counterpart in the film than there is in the short story. Her counterpart Tracy Fletcher was raised by adoptive parents after her biological parents were killed in an air raid shortly after she was born in 1945. Colin manages to get Tracy to the hospital for treatment before it is too late. Unlike the short story, the film ends before Colin and Tracy are married but it is heavily implied that they will become a couple: in the final scene, he visits her in hospital with a bunch of flowers and introduces himself.

Avengers: Endgame: Peter Quill runs into an alternate timeline version of his deceased girlfriend Gamora, who violently rejects him because she doesn't know him. Despite this, he becomes determined to find her.

Déjà Vu: Future!Doug sacrifices himself detonating the terrorist bomb away from the cruise. Past!Claire does not get to mourn for long, however, as she ends up meeting with the Doug from her timeline.

In Andrew M. Greeley's Angel Fire, Sean Desmond meets an Irish woman who is a dead ringer for Gabriella, the angel who has shepherded him through the entire book, after she leaves for good. It's implied that Gabriella knew of this coming meeting and used the woman's appearance in order to prime Sean for a relationship with her.

In Germline, the main character fall in love with a Genetic in the beginning who kills herself, but then later he meets a clone of her that he falls in love with.

In Heir Apparent, the protagonist is trapped in a virtual reality game and ends up developing a bit of a crush on one of the characters. For obvious reasons, they can't exactly be together once she's escaped the game. Luckily he looks just like the game's Teen Genius creator, who shows up to apologize to the heroine personally and seems flattered that she liked the character based on him...

In Stephenie Meyer's The Host, one human has his girlfriend taken over by a Soul. The free humans then remove the Soul, but the girlfriend is brain-dead due to the possession by this point—so they just stick the Soul back in the body. The original mind's boyfriend then stays with the Soul-in-the-body, despite said Soul being the reason that his girlfriend died at all.

In the Last Herald-Mage trilogy of the Heralds of Valdemar series, The Hero Vanyel loses his first Love Interest, Tylendel, in a truly epic tragedy that starts him on the path to becoming the most powerful Herald-Mage in the history of the kingdom. Seventeen years later, he finds a new love interest, Stefan, who is physically dissimilar, but still bears an uncanny psychic resemblance to Tylendel, up to and including forming a lifebond with Van. It turns out that 'Lendel was reincarnated as Stefan, though most of the main characters are ignorant of this until close to the end of the story.

John Perry from Old Man's War is very upset by his wife's death. Near the end of the book he meets a special forces soldier who has a body cloned from his his wife's DNA, who looks exactly like her. They end up together. That said, he is very much aware that Jane is not Katherine, merely sharing some of her DNA.

In Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park, the protagonist Abigail is transported a century into the past, where she befriends a girl named Beatie Bow and falls in love with Beatie's older brother Judah. After she returns to her own time, Abigail meets a man who is descended from the Bow family and looks just like Judah.

Inverted in Solaris—a doppelganger is created to remind the protagonist of a love interest he failed to save, and he eventually falls in love with her. This is not a case of Replacement Goldfish, as he remains well aware that the copy isn't the same person as the original. It still ends rather badly, though.

Subverted in Harry Harrison's To the Stars trilogy. Starworld (the third in the trilogy) has the protagonist sent to Israel to meet a contact, and he at first is shocked to see Sarah, his dead love who was killed in the first book. He then starts to see differences and, after talking to her, finds out that she's Sarah's sister. They end up having sex, but it turns out they're both married (he got married in book two) and have no intention of leaving their spouses.

In both the novel and subsequent TV movie TekWar, Jake Cardigan falls in love with an android built in the image of Beth Kittridge. The android dies in a Heroic Sacrifice. Then Jake meets the real Beth.

In the final book of The Dark Tower, Susannah Dean travels to an alternate New York City where she meets an alternate version of her (deceased) husband Eddie, their young (also deceased) friend Jake, and even an Earth-dog version of their (guess) billy-bumbler Oy.

Zig-zagged in the penultimate volume of Reflections of Eterna: Robert's love interest, Baroness Marianna, is killed during the Ollarian riots—but he never actually learns of it, since he is busy elsewhere, dealing with the rioters and helping the refugees. After escaping the city, however, a fulga (a shapeshifting elemental being) finds him and assumes Marianna's form to comfort him and help him recuperate after the Trauma Conga Line he just suffered, without adding any more trauma to it. The Magnificent Bastard Marcel Valme actually sees through her disguise and confronts her, but after confirming that she has no ulterior motive for Robert, he lets her carry on, since he wants Robert up and running ASAP.

In the short story "Random Quest" by John Wyndham, Colin Trafford is accidentally sent to an Alternate Universe where he falls in love with his counterpart's beautiful wife Ottilie Harshom. After returning to his own universe, he eventually tracks down Ottilie's counterpart. In his universe, Dr. Harshom's son Malcolm had a girlfriend who, unbeknownst to him, was pregnant when he was killed in 1927. She married a Canadian man named Reggie Gale who raised her daughter Belinda (Ottilie's counterpart) as his own. When Colin found Belinda, she was living in a flat in Ottawa with her mother. Reggie, a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, was killed in a mission over Berlin during the war. Colin marries Belinda within several months and brings her back to England to meet her grandfather Dr. Harshom.

Live-Action TV

In General:

Daytime soaps do this a lot. Most of the time it's not supernatural, just a way to bring back an actor who has been killed off, such as when Angie Hubbard of All My Children and The City met and married a man who looked exactly like her late husband Jesse. An example of the supernatural sort was on General Hospital when Anna's alien friend Casey had to return to his home planet, and then Anna met a lookalike human, Shep Casey.

By Series:

In The 4400, Richard was in love with and planning to marry a woman named Lilly when he was abducted in 1953. he was later returned in 2003, and his lover had died many years before. However, he met and later married a fellow returnee who had been abducted in the 90s who was identical to his beloved. Her name? Lilly. She was the granddaughter of the woman he had been involved with. As they grow closer he admits that at first he was drawn to her because of the resemblance but later it was all about her.

Altered Carbon: Officer Kristin Ortega keeps following Takeshi Kovacs around town after his personality has been downloaded into a new body. He later discovers that this is because the body used to belong to her former boyfriend, Officer Elias Ryker. This was arranged by his client Laurens Bancroft to punish her for failing to solve his own murder. Kovacs later falls into bed with Ortega after an After-Action Patch-Up, though she acknowledges that he's not the same person.

Ortega: I look into his eyes, but I see you staring back at me.

In episode 4 season 3 of Charmed, "All Halliwell's Eve", the sisters meet a nice guy in the past, who helps them out a lot. When they travel back to the present (several hundred years later) Prue meets an exact look alike (also played by the same actor) in P3.

Avoided in Chou Ninja Tai Inazuma Spark, the samurai from the Edo period lost his sister in an alien attack, then at the end of the story goes to live in the future, where he finds out that someone who looks just like his sister is an actress. At first he's elated to be "reunited" with his dead sister but goes running off screaming when he finds out that she's The Ditz.

An episode of CSI: Miami centers around a murdered plastic surgeon who outright invoked this trope by turning a female client into a surgical clone of his dead wife.

Jackie Tyler became a widow while her daughter was a baby. In a parallel universe, Pete Tyler lost his wife during the Cybermen incident (and they never had any children). When the former ended up in the universe of the latter, the two paired up, meaning that each was the other's Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest. Furthermore, it doesn't take long for Pete to accept Rose as the daughter he never had and likewise.

Tenth Doctor: There is a chance... back on my world... Jackie Tyler might still be alive. Pete: My wife died. The Doctor: Her husband died. Good match.

"Journey's End": As pictured, Rose gets her own Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest in the form of a half-human clone of the Doctor who looks exactly like him and has all his memories, but who ages like a human and is willing to stay with her in the parallel world.

The children's series Elly And Jools has a non-romantic friendship version. Elly is a ghost haunting the hotel that Jools's parents run, and Jools befriends her and spends the series helping her achieve her Unfinished Business. In the final episode, Elly moves on and Jools is moping around missing his best friend when he hears what he thinks is her voice, and turns out to be a girl who looks exactly like Elly whose family have just arrived in town.

Happens in Eureka when Henry and some others travel to 1947 and back, arriving at an alternate present. Henry finds his Alternate Universe self is married to a girl he barely knows. He tries to play the part of husband, but she confronts him and he spills the beans. She's married to a guy who doesn't know her. They get better.

A variation was overused to the point of boredom on the original Fantasy Island, when Rourke reveals that a visitor's fantasy love interest just happens to be another visitor to the island.

A rather weird example occurred in Farscape. At one point, John Crichton gets split in two, with the implication that they are both "real". Soon after, the crew gets separated into two groups, each with one Crichton. Aeryn, who'd been growing closer to Crichton during the course of the series, finally consummates her relationship with the Crichton she's with. He eventually performs a Heroic Sacrifice, and the remaining Crichton finds it an uphill battle to win back her love.

Also invoked in Highlander when a psychopathic woman is made to look like Duncan's dead Love Interest in order to get someone close enough to kill him.

In Home and Away, Curtis leaves with a girl who's the exact double of his dead girlfriend (it's the same actress).

Subverted in "Second Soul". One man's wife dies and donates her body to an alien race (they can occupy and revive recently dead bodies, and need to do so to live). He meets the recipient, and finds out that they do sometimes inherit random memories from their hosts, but she does not fall in love with him, becomes bothered by him following her around and eventually gets a restraining order against him. It's even hinted that the process is set up to prevent the aliens from being close to family members of their hosts, presumably to prevent this from becoming a regular occurrence.

"If I look like her, if I sound like her, I might be her? The answer is no."

In "In Another Life", a man mourning the death of his wife gets sent to a parallel universe. He quickly tries to find the alternate version of her, only to discover she already has a boyfriend. In the end, when he decides to stay, he meets the alternate version of his wife again and they strike up a friendship, leaving him hopeful that they may get together in the future.

Happens to Adam in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. The Rangers are sent back in time, he meets a girl, then meets a girl who looks exactly like her when the Rangers are returned to the present.

In Power Rangers Time Force, Jen was initially engaged to Alex, but after he is (supposedly) killed by Ransik, she time travels to the past and meets Wes, who looks exactly like Alex. Though at first hostile towards him, Jen begins warming up to and ultimately finds her Second Love with Wes.

A variation in the Stargate SG-1 episode "Ripple Effect". Among the dozen other SG-1s from alternate realities who show up on the base, one of them has Martouf, a Tok'ra who developed quite an interest in Samantha Carter. Though they don't hook up in the episode, it does provide some nice closure for Sam (and the fans) since the regular-universe Martouf was killed before the relationship had a chance to develop.

Played with in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Second Chances": Commander Will Riker's transporter duplicate (who later takes on the name Thomas) tries to woo Lieutenant Troi - at the time when Thomas separated from Will, he and Troi were lovers. And for a while it seems to work out, until it becomes clear that Thomas wants to put his career first... just like Will did before.

This comes up again in some of the Mirror Universe stories of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Sisko meets the counterpart of his dead wife, Jennifer, and Kira meets the counterpart to her dead lover, Vedek Bareil.

Subverted when Geordi falls for a holodeck simulation of a famous scientist. Since this was back in the days when the franchise assumed holodeck characters to be nonsentient unless proven otherwise, he doesn't pursue it, but he's very happy to meet the real scientist... until it turns out she's nothing like her simulation, doesn't get along with him at all, and is outraged when she discovers he'd been flirting with a make-believe version of her. Also, she's married, something the computer that created the hologram failed to mention to Geordi.

Averted in the pilot episode of Time Trax, where Darien's Love Interest in his own time is killed by the Big Bad. He goes back to the 20th century, chasing the escaped criminals only to encounter her Identical Grandmother. Nother happens between them, although she helps him in a later episode.

This is, essentially, what starts the plot of The Vampire Diaries: Stefan returns to Mystic Falls after finding out about the existence of Elena Gilbert, a human girl who looks exactly like his deceased ex Katherine Pierce (later explained to be because they're descendants, since Elena was adopted, and both are Doppelgängers). However, he subverts this slightly in that he falls in love with her because she's the opposite of Katherine.

Played with in Wonder Woman when the series moved from WW2 to the (then) present day. WW's long-time Love Interest Steve Trevor had been established as an Army officer in the 1940s, so in order to have "him" around in The '70s, he had to be replaced by his identically-named son — both played by the same actor, of course. However, to avoid the awkwardness of Diana flirting with her ex's son, it's quickly established that she and Steve Jr. are just friends, and she has other unrelated romantic entanglements over the rest of the series.

Kamelot's "The Haunting (Somewhere in Time)", off The Black Halo, deconstructs this trope. The protagonist, Ariel, tries to invoke this trope with Margarete, who closely resembles his First LoveHelena, in the song "When the Lights Are Down", with some help from Mephisto. However, by "The Haunting", Ariel comes to his senses and realizes that he was merely projecting Helena onto Margarete, and the two part ways.

Tabletop Games

This often happens with laterally reincarnated innerwalkers in Feng Shui.

Invoked and lampshaded in Avenue Q with Ricky, a guy who looks just like a muscular version of Rod's room-mate Nicky.

Video Games

Deconstructed in Silent Hill 2, where James can choose to be with Maria, who is an idealized doppelganger of his dead wife Mary. In the ending Maria starts to cough, implying that James is doomed to relive the pain of her dying from a terminal illness just like his wife did. The game implies that this is what James just deserves for clinging to an image of his wife instead of moving on. Or, in another interpretation, refusing to accept responsibility for what he did, and failing to understand why what he did was wrong and selfish.

In the game version of Da Capo this happens in the Miharu route. Girl gets hit by car, girl gets replaced by robotic duplicate. Boy loves robot. Robot malfunctions. Girl comes back. Boy gets together with girl...

The NES game Astyanax ends with the hero back in his normal highschool world, but the new student is a dead ringer for the fairy companion who pulled a heroic sacrifice.. but the game never says whether perhaps she was just reborn or what.

At the end of Sam & Max: Freelance Police: The Devil's Playhouse, Max is Killed Off for Real. The cutscene shows the devastated Sam leaving all his friends and walking aimlessly through the town. Suddenly, he sees the Time Travel elevator from Season Two and finds there Max from an Alternate Timeline, in which Sam is the one who died. After an awkward moment, they decide to resume their mischief and pretend none of this happened.

By Poker Night 2, they remember the events with laughter, possibly blocking out the memory of losing their best friend.

In .hack//G.U., after Haseo loses Shino to Triedge, he meets Atoli who happens to have the near exact same avatar design, save a color change. However, while her looks are similar, her personality is very different from Shino's, which causes Haseo to (initially) hate her. This trope is more justified in most instances in that it takes place in a video game where, like in real games, many characters are near Palette Swaps of others.

In Winter Shard, if Frederone's love interest Rosetta dies, Zewoe creates a clone of her to please him. This enrages Federone, either because he promised Rosetta that he wouldn't try to resurrect her or because he did resurrect her only for her to be Driven to Suicide because of her religious beliefs, and he actually orders Marliene to wear a mask at all times when around him because he doesn't want to be reminded of how much she resembles Rosetta. He can either come around to accept Marliene as a legitimate love interest in her own right, or he can reject her.

The alternate Harley Quinn falls for the main universe's Joker, as her Joker had been killed, but eventually dumps him and moves on when she realizes what an asshole he is.

The evil alternate Superman declares he will kill the main universe's Superman and take his Lois Lane. When Superman points out she would be disgusted and terrified of him, evil Superman says he doesn't care as long as Lois is alive again. Fortunately, Superman defeats the evil one.

The side comics also have this with Black Canary and Green Arrow, as described above in the Comic Books folder.

Time Hollow has one for Kori after the timeline is finally repaired. Ethan meets another pink-haired girl, implied to be Kori's daughter and his cousin.

Fate/Grand Order deconstructs this. If you have Assassin EMIYA (a Kiritsugu who never met Irisviel and thus fell down the Despair Event Horizon and emotionally shutdown) and a Dress of Heaven (Irisviel bonded with the Holy Grail, essentially the same Irisviel from Fate/Zero), they can interact. Irisviel tries to reach out to Assassin EMIYA, but he angrily rejects her attempts because he's not the same Kiritsugu she knows and he doesn't believe he can have a chance at happiness anymore (nor does he want to). Regardless, one of his skills mentions that he is protected by love from the Holy Grail and his final ascension image shows him being embraced by an apparition of Irisviel — whose love for Kiritsugu reaches beyond the limits of space and time.

Both Zoe and her Dimension of Lame counterpart are this for Torg. First Torg has a Cannot Spit It Out crush on Zoe, then he gets trapped in the Dimension of Lame and hooks up with that universe's Zoe, then Alt-Zoe is killed by Lord Horribus and Torg returns to his home universe, and starts crushing on Zoe all over again.

And it turns out Torg is this for Alt-Zoe as well, since her dimension's Torg vanished long ago after the two were romantically involved.

In Relativity, Anne ends up treating Irina like this after she arrives from her Alternate Universe, since Anne was in the process of divorcing her universe's version of her, while Irina had last left Anne on good terms.

ReBoot: After Glitch-Bob's attempt to split apart via portal goes explodey, Dot decides to marry the other Bob. Dot was already leaning towards choosing the other Bob, and Glitch-Bob's accident pushed her the rest of the way. Then it turns out that the other Bob is actually the Big Bad. Whoops.

On Futurama, Fry (and the Professor and Bender) get hurtled into the future so far, they reach the end of the universe and watch a new, identical one come into existence. Fry gets together with the Leela from the universe after that one due to accidentally fast-forwarding and having no way to go back (after the native Fry is killed by their time-machine's arrival). Uncharacteristically for this trope, though, we actually get to see the original Leela spend the rest of her life miserable and alone.

At the end of The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones, Judy Jetson is pining for her stone-age boyfriend Iggy Sandstone (met during a time-travel mishap), and then meets his identical space-age descendant, who's no less cool. Both boys are into rock music, of course.

Parodied in the Adventure Time episode "The Suitor", in which Princess Bubblegum is annoyed by a Dogged Nice Guy pick-up artist who won't stop courting her. She finally makes him happy by giving him a Sex Bot in her form that only cares about romance.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy